This is one of the rare occasions where I’m using the re-blog feature for Beyond Victoriana, but this is for a great friend and contributor to the blog, P. Djeli Clark, who addresses some important talking points about Black History Month in the United States. I highly encourage folks to also visit his blog for more great commentary about race, sci-fi/ fantasy, and pop media.

It’s that time of year again, Black History Month. Beginning every February in the United States, the country sets aside 28 (or 29 in a leap year) days to celebrate, discuss and engage Black History. Innocuous enough. And yet what seems to happen every Feb. 1st, is the beginning of a 28-days long ritual of whining (how come they get their own month?), misconceptions and endless micro-aggressive racial faux-pas. And this isn’t just from the usual sky boxes of white privilege; there are black people (some of them noteworthy) who wade into…well…the stupid. So here are a few tips to better understand the month, both for those who have to endure the stupid and for those who might be enticed to engage in the stupid.

This is just an updated list from an identical post I did last year. But guess what? It never gets old because the stupid never…

Viceroy Chang, cyborg steampunk panda and my convention companion, has an very important message to our readers:

“Hands up! Don’t shoot!”

See? He’s a pretty up with current events and both of us have been upset about the violence happening in Ferguson against protesters after the shooting of Mike Brown in Ferguson, MO. Often, it’s easy to slip into the “convention bubble” and ignore the serious issues affecting others. Like how we should keep the “punk” in steampunk, we should also work toward dismantling historically-created systems of oppression when we see it, and not just make it our Alt Hist fantasy.

Dragon*Con is coming up in less than a week. Along with conducting an array of panels and meeting with book people (contact me for available appointments), at the convention I will be wearing and selling black ribbons in protest against police brutality and the death of Mike Brown. Ribbons will be “pay-as-you-wish” — I’ll accept anything from a copper Abe Lincoln to a Benjamin.

Black Ribbon Against Police Brutality

All proceeds will be donated to several organizations to help the citizens of Ferguson & the Brown family when I return from the convention. The orgs haven’t been chosen yet, because I don’t know which ones will still need support in a couple of weeks, but it will be one or two on this list of grassroots organizations(EDIT 8/25: NEW LINK HERE). People are, of course, welcome to donate directly to any of them now.

For those of you who don’t know my face (and hey, with thousands of congoers, it can get pretty hectic), I’ll be sporting this arm band while walking around the con. Feel free to flag me down to donate and ask for a ribbon.

Like this:

I don’t know about you, but I spend so much time in a world of gears, cogs, pith helmets and imaginary robot butlers, I sometimes forget that there are people out there who see life quite differently. Hard to believe as it may be – there are some folk who haven’t ever pretended to pilot an airship, pulled on a scarlet corset or even polished their own goggles! How many of you reading this have had to fumble and mumble through a contrived explanation of exactly why you are wearing those brass wings and enormous top hat to some unassuming by-stander?

About Beyond Victoriana

The Nutshell ExplanationBeyond Victoriana is the oldest-running blog about multicultural steampunk and retro-futurism--that is, steampunk outside of a Western-dominant, Eurocentric framework. Founded in 2009, Beyond Victoriana focuses on non-Western cultures, underrepresented minorities in Western histories (Asian / Pacific Islander, Middle Eastern, First Nation, Hispanic, black / African & other marginalized identities), and the cultural intersection between the West and the non-West.